Roadshows, Part I
The Poster Formerly Known as Craig Olson
As I grew up, I was involved in four roadshows; efforts that had some
deep affects on my life. I thought I would share these with the group in
the hopes of starting some discussions of your contact and reaction to
roadshows and maybe providing something worth talking about.
In my experience, the actual implementation of a roadshow can vary quite
a bit, but the basic idea is this:
The youth organizations within a stake develop short plays – typically
about 15 minutes in length – within a set of guidelines provided by the
stake. These guidelines may include things like a theme, a budget and
other restrictions or goals for the production. The youth groups within
each ward then design, write, and rehearse their productions and, at the
agreed upon date, present them to each other and perhaps the adults in
the stake as well. In many cases, there are judges who evaluate each
production and then there are awards for the best show, best
representation of the theme, and so on – some sort of miniature Academy
Awards.
How the roadshow actually gets put together in each ward is largely up
to the leadership of the YM and YW programs.
When I was growing up, there was some pretty intense competition to see
which ward could come out on top and be awarded First Place. It had
become a competition that was (at least to my eyes) totally blown out of
proportion.
This was the situation when I first encountered the concept of a
roadshow. I was minding my own business, walking through the Cultural
Hall on my way to scouts when someone from the YM presidency stopped me
and invited me to play a part in the roadshow. Being who I am, I
declined. I was then encouraged to participate. And yet, I demurred. The
record will show that after some conversation, I was drug across the
room – no, that is not an exaggeration – so I would be able to take my
rightful place in the ward’s production.
I couldn't tell you what the theme for that year was. I couldn't tell
you what our play was about. What I do remember is that there was a
budget of $40 for the show and that my part consisted of sleeping most
of the play (that was the script, seriously) on stage wearing a sombrero
and a serape. At the appropriate recorded music cue, I – and my two
equally enthusiastic compatriots - would jump to our feet, perform a
snappy little dance while singing “We're three snappy chappies in snappy
serapes" (some plagiarism from a Disney cartoon that I still have never
seen).
At the end we sat back down a fell asleep once again.
Other people did other things, equally based on snippets from other
Disney cartoons, but my part is really the only piece I remember.
This was a real "road" show. When it came time for performances, the
stake chartered busses, and each ward would travel to each other ward
building and perform their show. Parents and other theatre-starved
individuals were watching the performances in each building and would –
in the course of two evenings – see all the roadshows developed by the
wards.
The plays were structured to support this concept. The play consisted of
two parts – an entr'acte that lasted exactly two minutes and was to be
performed in front of the curtain, and a main act that was presented
with the curtain open. While the entr'acte was being performed, the
first minute was for the previous ward to depart the stage and the
second minute was for your ward to completely decorate the entire stage
for the main act.
The highlight of the whole process for me was when we arrived at the old
Washington DC chapel [1]. Our bus got there a few minutes early and the
performances were running a few minutes late, so we had some time to
kill. The director told us we could take a walk around while we waited.
So the three snappy chappies took off around NW DC.
There we are: three teen-aged boys wearing sombreros, tight black pants,
flouncy shirts, lipstick, rouge and eyeliner. We got about 2 blocks
before a cop stopped us and wanted to know just what the hell we were.
Lucky for us, he believed us enough to take us back to the chapel in his
squad car to check with the leaders, but we were locked in the back seat
until a leader came and vouched for us. Might have changed my life,
being charged as a child prostitute at, say, 12. But we escaped with a
stern warning and some really hard stares.
During the night of dress rehearsals and the nights of the real
performances, we found time to watch the different shows. There were
three wards that were presenting what can only be called extravaganzas.
There were dozens of kids dressed in identical outfits doing Busby
Berkeley-style routines. One ward had all the girls in 100-yard
petticoats under full skirts and the dance numbers involved close order
drill choreography with lots of hip-lifts and other incredible ballroom
dance moves.
One of our leaders asked one of their leaders how they were able to
afford matching costumes for 40 different players and still stay on
budget. "Oh, we didn't buy those with the budget – the kids bought them
for themselves and they will wear them once the play is over, so they
didn't count against the budget."
You have to imagine the style of clothes they were wearing; even back in
the dark ages, no one was ever going to wear those outfits again – this
was just a ploy to get past the rules.
One of the extravaganzas won First Place. The other two came in right
behind them. Our Disney-themed, but on budget, production came in
somewhere in the lower half of the awards. I was rather bummed, and
figured if I ever was in a roadshow again, we were going to run it
strictly by every rule, we were going to make sure everyone involved
actually volunteered for the part and enjoyed the experience, and we
were going to win first place to boot.
What happened next year? Stay tuned.
[1] A really fine chapel – closer in appearance and design to a temple
than a ward building. It has since been sold to the Moonies, who changed
it quite a bit but left the D&C scriptures carved into the outside of
the building. Wonder if they ever read them.
Craig
Peggy Tatyana
to save them for posterity...or at least for your grandkids to read.
I've told my kids that the next time you come to visit we'll make you
come over for dinner and tell us stories all evening.
In my experience, there are two main genres of road shows: thoroughly
silly, and thoroughly silly with an LDS theme. The one I remember best
from my own youth was one of the former. It was about the importance of
dental hygeine, and the villian (who stole the show) was the dreaded
Tooth Decay. The song I remeber was the one from Peter Pan about Captain
Hook: "Who's the swiniest swine in the world? Tooth Decay! Tooth Decay!"
The saddest part was when they came to the lines about:
What a prize! What a joy!
Mrs. Hook's little baby boy!
but in the revised road show rendering it came out:
What a prize! What a joy!
Mrs. Mouth Decay's baby boy!
Mrs. Mouth Decay? Somebody seriously should have come up with a better
line than that.
The last road show my children were in was one of the second category,
based on Mormon versions of game shows. It used only songs from the
musical "Pajama Game." To the tune of "Hernando's Hideaway" they sang:
You're entering a special spot,
You're labelled with a colored dot
You'll pray and sing and eat lot
You're in the Provo MTC -- come see!
(I asked, "Is the second verse any better?" and she said "No.," so I'll
leave it at that.)
I, for one, am very much looking forward to the next edition of Craig's
memoirs.
Peggy
--
...it's always better to find humility before
it goes out looking for you. -- Carolyn Hax
EMM'er
over some of the other extravaganza years.. they had gotten out of
control, so we got the theme 48 hours before the event, we had write
it.. costume it, etc all in that time. It was great, we worked on it 2
days, then were done with it. Some shows were great, some stunk, but
the ratio was about the same with the short notice vs the long prep
event, so I really liked the short notice. It wasn't a hardship to
anyone. I semi-cheated though, I suggested we pre-arrange barnyard
costumes for the actors... figuring that any theme in the world could
be played out in a barnyard.. and we would already have costumes. We
won on costumes, but the play we wrote was lame.. and lost on overall.
And by that time we had abandoned the "road" part of the show, and we
only did it on one place. I was told as a youth too many auto
accidents in the "road" portion.. so the Church banned it.. no idea if
that was true.